Peggy Noonan has some apt words for such a time as this. She wonders where all the common sense--perhaps we should read "backbone" here--has gone in our therapeutic culture. She implies that Cho Seung-Hui's behavior has been spoken of in such ambiguous--seemingly compassionate--terms that it lacks any sense of reality. Noonan's piece picks up on an irony present in our culture today: with all the talk of tolerance and compassion that's perpetually in the air, it's interesting that there is little in the way of real compassion present in our society. It takes real differences for there to be a place for actual compassion. Don't call someone a "mental defective," it may just exacerbate their psychosis (which, believe me, I understand--words and assumptions one develops about himself do affect his understanding of his self) or hurt their self-image. I heard this sentiment expressed just this week regarding Cho. But isn't it more damaging--and after Monday's events, I think everyone has to answer "yes"--to take such a narrow view--to think only of an individual's rights and self-image? I thought this part by Noonan was an insightful piece of writing:
With all the therapy in our great therapized nation, with all our devotion to emotions and feelings, one senses we are becoming a colder culture, and a colder country. We purport to be compassionate--we must respect Mr. Cho's privacy rights and personal autonomy--but of course it is cold not to have protected others from him. It is cold not to have protected him from himself.
That is, it's actually cold not to name things what they are and it's actually heartless not to interfere and intrude upon one's privacy--especially when the private world of that person does not match the real world "out there" of everyone else.
In the end, Noonan says that the most realistic and truest thing she has heard all week came from one of the shooting victims.
The most common-sensical thing I heard said came Thursday morning, in a hospital interview with a student who'd been shot and was recovering. Garrett Evans said of the man who'd shot him, "An evil spirit was going through that boy, I could feel it." It was one of the few things I heard the past few days that sounded completely true. Whatever else Cho was, he was also a walking infestation of evil. Too bad nobody stopped him. Too bad nobody moved.
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